I’ve given up social media for the New Year and am trying to make friends outside Facebook while applying the same principles. Every day, I walk down the street and tell passersby what I’ve eaten, how I feel, what I did the night before, and what I will do tomorrow. Then I give them pictures of my family, my dog, and me gardening. I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them. And it works. I already have three people following me—two police officers and a psychiatrist.

My doctor took one look at my gut and refused to believe that I work out. So I listed the exercises I do every day: jump to conclusions, climb the walls, drag my heels, push my luck, make mountains out of molehills, bend over backward, run around in circles, put my foot in my mouth, go over the edge, and beat around the bush.

A zookeeper is ordering new animals. As he fills out the forms, he types “two mongeese.” That doesn’t look right, so he tries “two mongoose,” then “two mongooses.” Giving up, he types, “One mongoose, and while you’re at it, send another one.”

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest honors purposely lousy opening sentences for nonexistent novels. This entry from finalist Phillip Davies of Cardiff, Wales, gave us a very real laugh:

“Finally, after 97 long days adrift, Captain Pertwee was rescued, mercifully ending his miserable diet of rainwater and strips of sun-dried Haddock—which was actually far ghastlier than it sounded, what with George Haddock being his former first mate.”

None of my grandsons share my corny sense of humor. When the family is eating lasagna, I say, “Lean over your plate, boys. You’ll get less-on-ya.” I say to the ten-year-old, “Don’t yell through the screen; you’ll strain your voice.” And when I took another grandson to the zoo, I asked, “Do you know why that snake’s not pressed against the glass? He doesn’t want to be a windshield viper.”

A pride of lions, a gaggle of geese … and here’s how we might classify these groups:
• A brat of boys
• A giggle of girls
• A stagger of drunks
• A tedium of accountants
• A stitch of doctors
• A whine of losers
• A jerk of politicians

A man vacations on a tropical island, and the first thing he hears is drums. He goes to the beach and hears the drums; he eats lunch, he hears the drums; he tries to sleep, he can’t—drums. Finally he storms over to the manager. “I’ve had it! Can’t you stop those drums?” he begs.

The problem with math puns is that calculus jokes are all derivative, trigonometry jokes are too graphic, algebra jokes are usually formulaic, and arithmetic jokes are pretty basic. But I guess the occasional statistics joke is an outlier.

With the Ark settled safely after the flood, Noah opens the doors and commands the animals, “Go forth and multiply!” All the animals depart the Ark, except for two snakes in the back. Noah proclaims again, “Go forth and multiply,” yet the snakes stay put. Perturbed, Noah finally asks them, “Why have you not followed my command?” The snakes flicker their tongues and answer, “We can’t multiply, Noah—we’re Adders.”

During my mother’s memorial, my five-year-old granddaughter could not stop staring at the urn that contained her ashes.
“Is that really Great-grandma in there?” she asked her mother.
“Yes, it is.”
“Funny,” she said. “I always thought she was taller.”

A lion comes across two men, one reading and the other writing. The beast pounces on and devours the reader but ignores the writer. Why? Because, as everyone knows, a writer cramps while a reader digests.

Q: A juggler, a tightrope walker, and a clown were lost in the jungle, when all of a sudden a lion came out of nowhere and—OWP! ate the juggler and the tightrope walker. Why didn’t the lion eat the clown?

Here’s the news: A Rhode Island man was arrested for passing a counterfeit $100 bill. What gave him away? Lincoln’s face: It’s supposed to be on the $5 bill.
Source: Sun Chronicle (Attleboro, Massachusetts)

Here’s the laugh: A counterfeiter drives to a small town, enters a store, and hands the rube behind the counter an $18 bill. “Mind making change?” he asks.

Every ten years, the monks in the monastery are allowed to break their vow of silence to speak two words. Ten years go by and it’s one monk’s first chance. He thinks for a second before saying, “Food bad.” Ten years later, he says, “Bed hard.” A decade later, it’s the big day. He gives the head monk a long stare and says, “I quit.”

“I’m not surprised,” the head monk says. “You’ve been complaining ever since you got here.”

A fortune-teller advised me, “Do everything your boss says.” Sage advice, I thought, as I was working on an important project. As if I needed more proof of just how good the psychic was, that night, as I read the newspaper, I noticed my horoscope: “Do everything your boss says.”

My cousin always “borrows” money from her older brother’s piggy bank, which drives him crazy. One day, she found the piggy in, of all places, the freezer. Inside was this note: “Dear sister, I hope you’ll understand, but my capital has been frozen.”

Poodle: “My life is a mess. My owner is mean, my girlfriend is leaving me for a German shepherd, and I’m nervous as a cat.”
Collie: “Why don’t you go see a psychiatrist?”
Poodle: “I can’t. I’m not allowed on the couch.”

The hashtag #literaryturducken asked Twitter users to combine the titles of three classic books into a single title. Here are some responses:

Anne of Green Eggs and HamletYou Are What You Eat, Pray, Love in the Time of CholeraWhat’s Eating Gilbert Grapes of Wrath of the TitansHow Green Was My Valley of the Doll’s HouseThe Art of War and Peace in Our Time

As they leave the courthouse, a lawyer turns to his grim-faced client and says, “Janez, what’s wrong? You were acquitted.”
“I know, but now I’m really in trouble,” says Janez. “I just rented out my apartment for three years.”

At the nudist colony for communists, two men are sitting on the front porch. One turns to the other and says, “I say, have you read Marx?” The other replies, “Yes … I believe it’s these wicker chairs.”

An old farmer is inconsolable after his dog goes missing. He takes out an ad in the newspaper, but two weeks later, there’s still no sign of the mutt. “What did you write in the ad?” his wife asks. “ ‘Here, boy,’ ” he replies.

Two cartons of yogurt walk into a bar. The bartender, who is a tub of cottage cheese, says to them, “We don’t serve your kind in here.” One of the yogurt cartons says to him, “Why not? We’re cultured individuals.”

A pig walks into a bar, orders 15 beers, and drinks them. The bartender asks, “Would you like to know where the bathroom is?” “No,” says the pig. “I’m the little piggy that goes wee-wee-wee all the way home.”

Matt swallowed all the tiles from his Scrabble set. Doctors said the problem will work itself out, but not in so many words.—From Man Walks into a Bar by Stephen Arnott and Mike Haskins (Ulysses Press)

Girl: Why would he say that I was not educated? Friend: Well, that’s not exactly what he said, now, was it? Girl: No. He said I was tapid and voided of thought. Friend: Vapid and devoid of thought. Girl: Same thing.—From overheardinnewyork.com

Sarah, the self-appointed arbiter of the town’s morals, stuck her nose into everyone’s business. She made a mistake, however, when she accused her neighbor George of being an alcoholic after spotting his pickup parked in front of a bar one afternoon.

“George, everyone who sees it there will know what you’re doing,” she told him in front of their church group.

George ignored her and walked away. Later that evening, he parked his pickup in front of Sarah’s house and left it there all night.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest celebrates purposely awful opening sentences to imaginary novels. Here are the “best” from the past year.

As Holmes, who had a nose for danger, quietly fingered the bloody knife and eyed the various body parts strewn along the dark, deserted highway, he placed his ear to the ground and, with his heart in his throat, silently mouthed to his companion, “Arm yourself, Watson, there is an evil hand a foot ahead.”
–Dennis Pearce

Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe, and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, “There goes the most noble among men”—in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur. –Tom Wallace

After J. K. Rowling announced that she might write a Harry Potter sequel—he was last seen as a married dad—The Week asked its readers to predict the title of the next book. Here’s what they divined:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fiber Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Ask-Your-Mom Harry Potter and the Financial Portfolio of Doom Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Kidney Stone Harry Potter and the Quest to Buy a House in the Hogwarts School District Harry Potter and the Quidditch Mom

Are you a redneck? Want to be one? Take the Redneck IQ test and see how well you fare. Don’t look for answers. If you need them, you’re no redneck.

1) Which of these cars will rust out quickest when placed on blocks in your front yard?
’65 Ford Fairlane
’69 Chevrolet Chevelle
’64 Pontiac GTO

2) Calculate the smallest limb diameter on a persimmon tree that will support a ten-pound possum.

3) A woodcutter has a chain saw, which operates at 2700 rpm. The density of the pine trees in the plot to be harvested is 470 per acre. The plot is 2.3 acres in size. The average tree diameter is 14 inches. Here’s the question: How many Budweisers will be drunk before the trees are cut down?

4) If your uncle builds a still that produces 20 gallons of shine per hour, how many car radiators are required to condense the product?

The Week asked its readers to come up with the name of a French fast-food restaurant:
•Brief Bourguignonne
•Kentucky Fried Chic
•Tore de Pants
•Fatatouille
•Fryer Jacques
•Have It Eur Way
•Chomps Élysées

On his way to perform at a graveside service, the bagpiper gets lost. After many wrong turns, he finally arrives, but the minister and mourners have already gone. Only the grave diggers remain, and they’re eating lunch. Not knowing what else to do, the bagpiper begins to play.

The workers put down their lunches and weep as the man plays “Amazing Grace.” When he finishes, he packs up his bagpipes and heads for his car. As he opens the door, he hears one of the workers say, “I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for 20 years.”

While filling up at a gas station, I accidentally spilled gasoline on my shirt. When I went inside to pay, I noticed a woman crinkling her nose. Embarrassed, I tried to put her mind at ease. “If you smell gas,” I said, “it’s me.”

Conversation at our business lunch turned to illegal immigration. “I read an article that said 60 percent of Americans are immigrants,” commented one of my colleagues. “That can’t be true,” another said.

“No,” agreed a Native American co-worker. “There’s a lot more of you than that.”

What’s the state of the states of the union? Let’s see … New Yorkers mock Southern drawls. Southerners don’t cotton to West Coast hippies, who in turn can’t understand why Midwesterners live so far from the ocean breeze. And Midwesterners? They wonder who could survive New York-the city that never sleeps. Yes, the U.S.A. is one big, happy dysfunctional family. And to prove there are no hard feelings, every state gets a handpicked potshot all its own.

Alabama
When a visitor to a town in Alabama spotted a dog attacking a boy, he grabbed the animal and throttled it with his bare hands. An impressed reporter saw the incident and told him the next day’s headline would scream “Valiant Local Man Saves Child by Killing Vicious Animal.”
“I’m not from this town,” said the hero.
“Then,” the reporter said, “it will say ‘Alabama Man Saves Child by Killing Dog.'”
“Actually,” said the man, “I’m from New Hampshire.”
“In that case,” the reporter grumbled, “the headline will be ‘Yankee Kills Family Pet.'” Alaska
An Alaskan was on trial in Anchorage. The prosecutor leaned menacingly toward him and asked, “Where were you on the night of October to April?”

Arizona
It’s so hot in Arizona, cows are giving evaporated milk and the trees are whistling for dogs.

Arkansas
An Arkansas state trooper pulls over a pickup truck on I-40.
He says to the driver, “Got any ID?” The driver asks, “‘Bout what?”

California
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the FBI, and the CIA want to see who is best at catching perps. So a rabbit is released into the forest, and each of them has to catch it.
The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After months of extensive investigation, they conclude that rabbits do not exist.
The FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads, they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit.
The LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later, dragging a bruised mountain lion behind them. The mountain lion’s yelling, “Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!”

Colorado
How do you know you’re in the presence of a real Coloradan? He carries his $3,000 mountain bike atop his $500 car.

Connecticut
What’s the difference between Massachusetts and Connecticut? The Kennedys don’t own Connecticut.

Delaware
A DuPont chemist walks into a pharmacy and asks the pharmacist, “Do you have any acetylsalicylic acid?”
“You mean aspirin?” says the pharmacist.
“That’s it! I can never remember that word.”

Florida
My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned 60 and that’s the law.
–Jerry Seinfeld

Georgia
How do you know you live in Georgia? When all directions start with “Go down Peachtree …” and include the phrase “When you see the Waffle House …”

Idaho
Want to join a militia? Idaho’s your state. Here are some terms to learn:
Commander: Whoever starts the unit.
Second in Command: His best friend.
Auxiliary Commander: His wife.
Captain: New guy.
Militia Headquarters: The basement of whoever has the fax machine.
Squad: Guys in the ambulance who come out when a militia member accidentally shoots himself during training.

Illinois
This is how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, “Gee, I’m enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn’t cold enough.”
–Richard Jeni

My wife and I were having lunch at a fashionable eatery in Annapolis when we noticed what looked like a familiar face at the next table. Screwing up my courage, I asked, “Excuse me. Aren’t you Marlin Fitzwater, the former White House press secretary?”

“Yes, I am,” he acknowledged, and graciously interrupted his lunch to talk to us.

As we were leaving the restaurant, I remarked to the hostess, “Do you know you have Marlin Fitzwater on the terrace?”

“I’m not sure about that,” she replied, “but we have Perrier and Evian at the bar.”

A policeman looked up to see a woman racing down the center of the road at 100 m.p.h. He pulled her over and said, “Hey, lady, would you mind telling me why you’re going so fast down the middle of the road?”

“Oh, it’s okay, Officer,” she replied. “I have a special license that allows me to drive like that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Let’s see it.” The cop looked at the license and then concluded, “Ma’am, there’s nothing special about this. It’s just a temporary license.”

“Look at the very bottom, though,” the woman insisted. “See? It says ‘Tear along the dotted line.'”

Rev up your engines and tell the crabgrass to look out. The 12th annual Mow Down, Show Down Lawn Mower Championship was held in Avon Park, Florida, bringing out the best and fastest in lawn-mower racing. It also brought out some colorful names.

Hoss drove over to the next county to buy a new bull for the farm. It cost more than expected, and he was left with only one dollar. This was a problem, since he needed to let his wife, Sue, know that he’d bought the bull so she could come get it with the truck—and telegrams cost a dollar per word. Hoss thought hard for a minute. Finally he said, “All right. Here’s my dollar. Go ahead and just make it this one word: Comfortable.”

“How’s that going to get your point across?” the clerk asked, scratching his head.

News that her third child was going to be a girl thrilled my cousin, who already had two boys. "My husband wants to call her Sunny," she told me, "and I want to give her Anna as her middle name in memory of my mom."

I thought they might want to reconsider their decision, since their birth announcement would herald the arrival of Sunny Anna Rainey.

Phil was driving down a country road late one night when he felt a big thud. He got out of the car and looked around, but the road was empty. Since there was nothing else to be done, Phil drove on home. In the morning the sheriff was standing at his doorstep. “You’re under arrest for hitting a pig and leaving the scene,” the lawman told him with a frown. “Please come with me.”

Phil couldn’t believe his ears. “But how could you possibly know that’s what happened?” he asked.

Although I knew I had put on a few pounds, I didn’t consider myself overweight until the day I decided to clean my refrigerator. I sat on a chair in front of the appliance and reached in to wipe the back wall.

While I was in this position, my teenage son came into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “Whatcha doin’, having lunch?”

Bad weather meant I was stuck overnight at O’Hare airport in Chicago. Along with hotel accommodations, the airline issued each passenger a $10 meal ticket, or “chit.” That evening after dinner I presented my meal ticket to the cashier.

“Is this chit worth $10?” I asked.

Looking up nervously, the cashier responded, “I’m sorry, sir. Was the meal that bad?”

My wife and I run a small restaurant where we often name our specials after our employees—dishes like “Chicken Mickey,” after our dishwasher who gave us the recipe, and “Rod’s Ribs,” after a waiter who had his personal style of barbecue. One evening after rereading the menu, I broke with this tradition and changed the description of the special we had named after our chef.

Despite her skills and excellent reputation, somehow I didn’t think an entrée named “Salmon Ella” would go over big with our customers.